So what did everyone think of the 'old SOMA' and the Verticle Slice material?

[SlackerinDeNile]

Personally I prefer the version of the story they decided to go with. The original plot had a bunch of ideas good on their own, but meshed together formed a weird unfocused mess. The final story even suffers a bit of that because they still wanted to retain some elements of the previous plot (probably to reuse some finished maps, characters and game assets). But it is far more focused, clear and interesting than the previous one. And I'm glad they decided to change it.

I agree with you there, although with the old story I get the impression that the 'unfocused mess' elements were kind of intentional, it gives it the feel of a bizarre vivid, lucid dream or some sort of advanced game simulation gone wrong. That and it was still early days, that video was clearly an unfinished alpha version, even if it did look and sound pretty damn cool.